Little Squidoo Tricks That Make A Difference

Table Of Contents ♦ Join Fan Club Button ♦ Contact Me Button ♦ Tweet Button ♦ Get Love For Your Lens ♦ Get Bookmarked ♦ Adding Alt Tags ♦ Other Tips & Tricks ♦ Feedback & Comments

You may not have known it but this table of contents is also one of the tips and tricks! Having a click-able table of contents for your lens is extremely useful to help readers navigate your page.

The benefits of one like this over the table of contents module or the contents at a glance feature you can turn on when you edit your introduction module is that it displays everything you want, looks nice, and takes up less room on your page.

Why you should put this on your page?

Having an easy to use feature for readers to jump from section to section of your page is extremely useful so that they can get to the content they want to read and skip anything they don't. Using one such as this is better than the table of contents module because it takes up a lot less room on your page and looks a lot nicer, don't you agree?

Where should you put this on your page?

Right below the introduction module, or even in your introduction module! You could also use it throughout your lens with a back to table of contents link.

Here's the code.

<p style="border: 5px #069 solid; background-color: #4682B4; color: #ffaa00; padding: 5px 20px; text-align: center; font-family: Arial; font-weight: bold;"><a href="url1" style="color: white;">Link Name 1</a> &#9830; <a href="url2" style="color: white;">Link Name 2</a></p>

• Continue adding "&#9830; <a href="url" style="color: white;">Link Name</a>" for as many links as you need!


• Play with it, change the colour codes, border thickness, font, etc. make it your own! Or tweak it to suit your lens theme.


• To link to a specific module you need to have the Lens Workshop Add-on for Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.

As you probably know, when you go to a lensmasters main page there is a little button on the right hand side that says Join Fan Club. It will look like this: Join Fan Club
(Clicking it will join my fan club!)

What many people do not realize is that you can put this button right onto your page! (Like I did just there.) This will make it noticed much more than it is sitting on your lensmaster page. By more people seeing it, more people are encouraged to join your fan club. The more people in your fan club, the more views your new lenses will get. In theory anyways.

Why you should put this on your page?

Your fan club is like your own personal mailing list to people who like your lenses. When you send squidcasts people in your fan club will receive the message and likely check it out. In this way you can send out a message to your entire fan club anytime you publish a new lens or update an existing one. The more people in your fan club the better chance your newest lenses will pick up quickly. Pretty cool!

Where should you put this on your page?

I add this button on my lenses in the "About Me" module. I find this is the best spot to put it because it is related and does not interrupt any content, the people who see it will be looking at YOU by that point not your content.

You can see an example of this here. (This will take you to the bottom of this page.)

Here's the code.

<a class="btn_20 float_right" href="http://www.squidoo.com/member/join_fan_club/Squidoo Username Here">Join Fan Club</a>

• If you want to change the width of the button add style="width: 100px;" right before href=. Change the number of pixels after width to make the button wider or smaller.


• You can change the position of the button on your page by taking float_right and changing it to left. Or taking it out all together and using other html to position it wherever you want.

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Just like the Join Fan Club button, when you go to a lensmasters main page there is a little button underneath the users image that says Contact Me, if they have contact enabled. You can enable contact by editing your profile. Anyways the button will look something like this:Contact Me!

If you have somewhere on your page that you want to enable your readers to e-mail you I feel that a button looks a lot better than a link.

Why you should put this on your page?

If you have a lens where readers may need to contact you this can be an extremely useful button as it stands out on a page and looks nice. I wouldn't recommend putting it on just any lens though as you may receive some spam.

Where should you put this on your page?

Anywhere you want to! I think the best spot would be, like the Join Fan Club button, in the "About Me" module.

Here's the code.

<a class="btn_20 float_right" style="width: 106px;" href="http://www.squidoo.com/utility/contact_lensmaster/Lens URL Here" target="_blank">Contact Me!</a>

• Where I said Lens URL Here you do not put the entire URL, just the last bit that you chose for your lens. For example, for this lens I would put squidoo-tricks. This make the e-mail go to the lensmaster that wrote the lens.


• You can change the position of the button on your page by taking float_right and changing it to left. Or taking it out all together and using other html to position it wherever you want.

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Twitter is one of the most powerful sharing sites on the web. Having a few people tweet your lens can do wonders for traffic. Now, Squidoo has helpfully added a little Facebook "Like" button at the top of every page but no tweet button, so it's up to you to add your own! (Like I did just there.) (Click to Tweet this page!)

What's great about this handy little button is it shows how many times your lens has been tweeted and you don't need a twitter account to have it.

Why you should put this on your page?

Everyone wants more views to their lens, this is another way of getting links to your lens with almost no effort by you. People who read your lens, if they really like it, will probably want to share it with their friends. Giving them as many sharing options as possible is the best way to get your lens passed on with no work by you. Not only will this give your lens more views, it will also have more backlinks.

Where should you put this on your page?

In my opinion the best spots to put this button on your page are either in the right corner of the introduction, near the Facebook "Like" button, or somewhere on your page near other sharing or rating tools, such as the lens love widget.

Here's the code.

<a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=Lens URL Here&source=username" target="_blank" title="tweet"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=Lens URL Here" alt="tweet" width="51" height="61" align="right" />

• For lens URL you need to put the entire URL.
  Example; http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-tricks


• For &source=username, putting your twitter username will give you credit whenever it is retweeted. If you don't have a twitter account, like me, you can just leave it blank.


• If you are going to put this into your introduction module you are going to need to change align="right" to style="float:right" for it to work.

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When readers view your lens, they see the rate, email, favourite, lensroll, and like buttons at the top of the lens, BEFORE they read the content and make that opinion. Sometimes people will scroll back up to where those buttons are, but it's better if you can give readers access to them right AFTER they have read the content. This is where the Lens Love Widget comes in. It looks like this... (Clicking will take you to an example on this page.)

Why you should put this on your page?

By adding the Lens Love Widget to your page it will remind readers who have read all the way to the bottom of your page to rate it and etc. More ratings, lensrolls, likes, etc. means a better lensrank.

Where you should put this on your page?

A good spot to put this on your page is right before the guestbook, or immediately following your content before links to other places or Amazon modules. You can see an example of this here... (Clicking will take you to the Lens Love Widget on this page.)

How to add it.

You can add the Lens Love Widget just like any other module, by going to;
"Add Module" -> "All Modules" -> "L" -> "Lens Love Widget"

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Social media is a key part of getting more traffic to your lens, if people like your page and content they are going to want to share it. You as a lensmaster have to give them / remind them of all the options they have! This is where the Bookmark Widget comes in. When readers mouse over it they can pick from the most popular options such as Stumbleupon, Facebook, and Digg or pick from a list of 285 other sharing and bookmarking options. It looks like this... (Clicking will take you to an example on this page.)

Why you should put this on your page?

Adding the Bookmark Widget allows your readers to share your lens on almost every social media network and bookmarking site there is. This allows them to build backlinks for you, improving your Google ranking and your Lens ranking.

Where you should put this on your page?

A good spot to put this is with the Lens Love Widget, right before the guestbook, or immediately following your content before links to other places or Amazon modules. You can see an example of this here... (Clicking will take you to the Bookmark Widget on this page.)

How to add it.

You can add the Bookmark Widget just like any other module, by going to;
"Add Module" -> "All Modules" -> "B" -> "Bookmark Widget"

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Images are a great way to get more traffic and boost your keywords. The secret is alt tags. Alt tags are alternative text that displays when you hover over an image or if the image does not display on the page. What's useful about alt tags is that Google uses them to index pictures, this means that you can start bringing in traffic from Google image searches!

The more traffic the merrier right?

Why you should put this on your page?

Adding alt tags allows your images to be indexed on Google by the text you attribute to the image. This brings in Google image search traffic and can boost your keywords by implanting them in the alternative text.

Where you should put this on your page?

With absolutely every image you place on your lens with html. It is an extremely useful tiny bit of code.

Here's the code.

<img src="URL of your image" alt="your alternative text" />

• To see more about adding images and where to get free images check out triathlontraining's Free Images and How to Use Them lens.


• Similar to the alt tag there is also a title tag which displays the text when you mouse over. It is the exact same as the alt tag, title="your text here". The difference is that the title tag works on all browsers, the alt tag sometime doesn't display on mouse over on certain browsers, this is why I add both tags to my images which also increases the keyword count.

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This lens is still a work in progress and many more Squdioo tips and tricks are yet to be added or linked to! Favourite it or join my fan club to receive updates when new Squidoo tips and tricks are added. For now, adios and happy lens building!